Still Seven

A few days ago, I told you that we might have a seventh member of our gang. Well she’s still here and she’s still called ‘Seven’ because we haven’t thought of a better name yet. You have to get to know a dog first before you can come up with a moniker that really fits.

When we got up the morning after she arrived, Seven was inside the gate. We all rushed up and started barking questions at her as we’d done the day before. The humes tried to get us to stop, probably because they thought we were frightening her, but most of us just carried on.

Seven still didn’t have much to say for herself so we got bored after a while and wandered off to do our own things. Then it was breakfast and you wouldn’t believe how fast she could eat. I mean, the rest of us aren’t exactly slow when it comes to the old nosebag, but Seven looked like she was going for the world record. Still, as I said before, she’s incredibly thin - you can see every one of her ribs - so she needs all the grub she can get at the moment.

Even now, a few days later, she doesn’t seem to have filled out much but she does seem a lot happier. She’s got to know the rest of us a bit better and seems to realise that we’re actually very friendly. Some of us have taken longer to make friends with her than others. Poppy was about the last to accept her into the gang and even seemed quite frightened of her. Of course, she denied it when I asked her about it but why else did she keep barking at Seven and then running off?

The odd thing is, Poppy is now closer to Seven than any of us and they play together all the time. I even saw Poppy teaching Seven how to play ‘chase’. Seven didn’t seem to understand the game at all to start with but she’s got the hang of it now and can’t get enough of it. She’s fast too.

As she’s begun to settle in, she’s also been getting up to some bits of mischief - and that’s very important if you want to be a member of our gang. Yesterday, for instance, I saw her nick one of the female hume’s oldish jumpers and then make a sort of nest with it. Later on, Seven went off for a pee and Gelert was straight in there and grabbed the jumper.

Seven looked very unhappy when she came back and saw Gelert chewing away on it and had a tentative game of tug with him. She seemed very wary of the Big Guy though and she gave up after a few seconds. She kept her eyes on him and when we all trotted down the land after the humes, she seized her chance and got her jumper back again.

Here's a picture of Seven and Gelert later on when the jumper seemed to have just vanished.

SEVEN: Um, excuse me, Mr Gelert, but I was wondering if you'd seen my jumper.

GELERT: Well now, there's a thing. It was right here in front of me a minute ago.

Anyway, it’s almost food time so I’ll be off soon. Before I go though, I must just tell you about the fantastic time we had last night. It was so cold outside that the humes let us sleep in the house. They put down all kinds of blankets and things on the floor but most of us slept on settees or armchairs. There was even a fire going for most of the night. Brilliant or what!!!

Now We Are Seven???

Well, what a turn-up. Literally. I mean there’s already six of us dogs here and now there might be seven! These humes must be bonkers if you ask me.

Anyway, this is how it happened this very afternoon….

The humes had got a couple of other humes in to help do some stuff to their olive trees. I don’t know exactly what but it seemed to involve cutting lots of branch things out of them. They were only here for about two hours but during that time we had to stay in our private area.

The thing is, a lot of humes in Greece are frightened of dogs. Yeah, believe it! I mean, look at our pictures. OK, so if we’d been allowed out, we’d certainly have raced round barking at them. But only for a laugh. We wouldn’t have actually bitten them or anything. Still, I suppose they weren’t to know that and Gelert is enormous and has got scary eyes, even though he’s really soft as butter.

So there we all were in our private area having a bit of a snooze and occasionally scaring the wits out of these two humes by barking at them when they came anywhere near. One time, we let them get almost up to our fence and then all suddenly started barking at once. Laugh? You should have seen them jump. Poppy reckons one of them actually peed himself but I’m not sure. Poppy makes things up sometimes.

What happened next we only found about later when we heard it from - well, she doesn’t seem to have a name so I’ll call her ‘Seven’ for now. She seems a bit shy at the moment so I don’t know if she’s given us all the details, but apparently she was mooching around just outside the farm gate when our female hume spots her.

Even though she’s doing no harm to anyone and is only looking round trying to find a bit of food, Seven thinks she’s going to get a whack or at least be yelled at, so she immediately goes into submissive mode. (This involves lowering yourself as low as you can to the ground and doing a kind of weaving movement in front of the hume you think is going to whack you one. Nearly all dogs that don’t have homes do this when a hume comes near. It’s a trick they learn very early on after they’ve already had a couple of kicks or the odd thump with a stick. The cowering thing is a dog’s way of saying, ‘It’s OK. It’s OK. I have absolutely no intention of biting you or doing anything else to you that you may find unpleasant’.)

Well, Seven is hugely relieved of course when the female hume comes slowly towards her and talks to her in a low, soft voice. Then the male hume turns up and he does much the same thing. The next thing she knows, Seven’s got a bowl of food in front of her and she can’t believe her luck.

“I’d hardly eaten anything for days,” she told us later, and we could well believe it was more like weeks when we first set eyes on her. You could see all her ribs and she looked totally emancipated.

ED: I think Buster means ‘emaciated’ here.

BUSTER: You interrupting again?

ED: Sorry, Buster.

Anyway, after the other two humes had finished their tree stuff and left, we were let out of our private area and, even though we hadn’t seen or heard Seven yet, we all sniffed that she was somewhere nearby. It only took a few seconds before we tracked her down. There she was outside the farm gate, which was firmly closed, and all curled up on a couple of blankets in this really big open-fronted plastic box. Not only that, but there was a bowl of water in front of her and another one which had obviously had food in it.

Of course, the six of us all started barking at her at once:

“Who are you?”

“Where’d you come from?”

“What you doing out there in that box?”

“Any of that food left?”

The poor thing looked terrified and was shaking from head to tail. We were only being inquisitive, but I suppose six of us all barking questions at her at the same time must have been quite frightening. Fair play to her though, she didn’t run off. After a while, she even answered a couple of our questions. She said she was outside because the humes had wanted to give her a bit of time to settle before she came face-to-face with us lot for the first time. Well, I suppose they had a point there.

I’ve no idea whether Seven will end up being a permanent member of the gang here. She may not still be here in the morning even. Who knows? I’ll keep you posted.

Anyway, here's a picture of her. You can't really tell how thin she is from the photo though: